Honest Game Trailer Remembers The Parts Of Crash Bandicoot We Tried To Forget

A lot of folks grew up playing the Crash Bandicoot games and have a lot of fond memories of running, jumping and spinning their way through the classic PlayStation trilogy. It wasn't all sunshine and wumpa fruit, though, and Honest Game Trailers is here to remind us why some things are best left in the past.

This is pretty perfect timing, considering the fact that Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy just launched today. Instead of being an HD-ified version of the original three games in the Bandicoot trilogy, this package was built from the ground up to be a complete remake of those PlayStation titles, warts and all. The package comes from the team at Vicarious Visions and, according to the reviews, it's a very solid stroll down memory lane.

Still, not all of those memories are good ones for folks who lived through the original PlayStation outings, and Honest Game Trailers is here to make that fact abundantly clear. They kick the whole thing off with a little history lesson, reminding folks that Crash Bandicoot began life as a Naughty Dog series. The studio hasn't been doing much since those days, going on to make some smaller, indie titles that you've probably never heard of like Uncharted and The Last of Us.

But as is the theme of the Uncharted series, greatness comes from small beginnings. It's fair to say that Crash Bandicoot was a direct response to characters like Mario and Sonic in an era when every developer under the sun was trying to make the next great mascot game. The great thing about the Crash games is that they actually delivered pretty stellar experiences. Sure, they were linear while Mario had already ventured off into the open world of his Nintendo 64 days, but they still offered a lot of nifty gameplay ideas that you couldn't find anywhere else.

As a "furry in jorts," players got to tackle all sorts of fantastical levels spread across time in an effort to bring down a pretty standard collection of video game baddies. But as the trailer points out, the extremely linear levels and "barely 3D" was accompanied by some spot-on gameplay, something Naughty Dog hasn't lost the knack for.

I especially enjoy the fact that they brought up the levels which have the player running toward the camera rather than away from it, typically fleeing from a boulder or murderous dinosaur. While I actually really liked those levels (one was even featured in Uncharted 4!), I totally get the HGT folks referring to them as "why would you do this mode."

The trailer then goes beyond the original trilogy, pointing out that Crash kept on spinning even after Naughty Dog had moved on, but the series never really reclaimed that magic formula from the earlier years.

But hey, the original "Jorts Bandersnatch" games were pretty rad, so we're happy to see the remakes finally launching. If you happened to get in some time with them, let us know your thoughts in the comments below.